“In fact, try as we may to make a silence, we cannot.” John Cage noted in 1957. Like the white of a canvas, deafening silence continually surrounds notated and sounded music. And even where music can be heard, it can eloquently conceal things; it can loudly shout out the longing for silence, or it can masterly play with resounding silence. In this edition, four distinctly different pieces reflect four completely different attempts to deal with emotional or audible silence, giving us a glimpse behind the “continuum” that surrounds us. As John Cage stated, “times have changed; music has changed”. It will never stop doing so. The demanding artwork of the album series is created with pictures by the painter Gerhard Richter, commenting on the thematic concentration of the programs in an artistic manner. Richter, one of the most important living German artists, has been a member of the board of trustees of the Ensemble Musikfabrik since 2009.

This new WERGO album brings together first recordings in studio quality of works composed especially for Ensemble Resonanz. Composer Enno Poppe has always been drawn to string instruments because of the nearly infinite possibilities to vary their pitch, playing techniques, and sound qualities. Ensemble Resonanz, based in Hamburg, has received international acclaim for its precise intonation, its fresh interpretations of both contemporary and traditional works, and its inquisitive openness to unconventional musical formats. Poppe’s “Wald” [Woods] for four string quartets (2009/10) has been a permanent feature of the ensemble’s touring repertoire for many years. With its fractal relationships between the four strings of four instruments in four string quartet groupings, “Wald” gives us the impression of directly participating in the composer’s thought processes. The collaboration with renowned soloist Tabea Zimmermann for Poppe’s concerto “Filz” [Felt] for viola and chamber orchestra (2013/14) was particularly enjoyable for all concerned. Zimmermann combines technical virtuosity with a willingness to master unusual challenges: in this work, she plays an endless and permanently shifting intonation curve within an amorphous atmosphere of 1/3-tone intervals. The result sounds like music from another world, and the inspiration came from Poppe’s experiences with traditional Korean music. “Stoff” [Material] was originally composed in 2015 for Ensemble Musikfabrik in Cologne using strings, woodwinds, and brass (available on WER 73952}, but in 2018 Poppe created the more homogeneous version for string orchestra heard here.

Enno Poppe’s works are probably performed more often than those of any other living German composer – not only in Germany. With his idiosyncratic manner of dealing with tradition, this red-haired artist, born in 1969, has developed an instantly recognizable musical style that fascinates and touches both specialists and listeners normally skeptical of new music. No matter how wild or eccentric, how chaotic or structured Poppe’s pieces may sound, they always reveal the raw materials from which they are made: a small number of nondescript building blocks (quasi-motifs). The fascination for the listener consists in the perceptible transformation of these motifs. Poppe has worked closely for many years as a conductor with the Ensemble Musikfabrik in Cologne and has written a number of pieces especially for the group. The current album collects these chamber music works, including “Stoff” for nine musicians. The German word “Stoff” can refer to fabric or any kind of material, including musical or literary material; the appearance and disappearance of motivic threads is also characteristic of the “Nouveau Roman.” The titles and sounds of the other works are also simultaneously direct and ambiguous. This album is part of WERGO’s comprehensive series documenting Enno Poppe’s music.

Poppe’s composition Fett for orchestra dates from 2018/19 and was commissioned by the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association and its artistic director Gustavo Dudamel, and "musica viva". Enno Poppe is one of the most important younger representatives of New Music. His composition I cannot remember anything for chorus, organ and orchestra, based on words by Marcel Beyer, was written between 2005 and 2015 as a commission for Bayerischer Rundfunk’s "musica viva". The first performance in Germany was recorded on May 8, 2015 in the Herkulessaal of the Munich Residenz. The album edition of the “musica viva” series, founded in June 2000 to document the concert series that has existed since 1945, contains selected live recordings of “musica viva” concerts. An integral part of the edition is made up of concerts by the ensembles of the Bayerischer Rundfunk, guest recordings by international orchestras and ensembles, and also historical recordings. With two or three new releases per year, the main focus of the edition -which sees itself primarily as a series for composers –is mainly on portrait albums.

The new album with works by Enno Poppe joins a series of its own on WERGO, the albums of which are dedicated to the composer born in 1969, who has steadily developed into a permanent fixture among German composers of international renown. The two first recordings are once again ensemble pieces, performed by two new music formations closely associated with the composer: Ensemble Musikfabrik and Ensemble Nikel, a quartet of saxophone, electric guitar, percussion and piano. In the three-movement piece "Fleisch", the "sounds" and playing gestures of pop and rock music are evoked, and microtonal effects are savoured with Moog synthesiser sounds, for which Enno Poppe has a soft spot. Enno Poppe wrote the rhythmically concise piece "Prozession" for the Ensemble Musikfabrik. For almost an hour, the work leads through various instrumental combinations along a continuous chain of differentiated rhythmic impulses of a large percussion section in an astonishingly entertaining manner, only to mysteriously dissolve into natural sounds at the end.